Q: Raffaele Palladino has done well for Atalanta and is friends with Enzo Maresca. Could he be the next big Italian coach coming to England? Would he be a good choice for a top team next year?
@AshPrashar via Instagram
A: You are right to point out how well Palladino has done at Atalanta since his arrival. When Gian Piero Gasperini left the club, Atalanta initially entrusted the team to his disciple Ivan Juric. The results were disappointing, particularly in attack, with just four wins in 14 matches and too many draws.
Juric was duly sacked and Palladino brought in. He is also a Gasperini disciple, but one with a stronger recent track record after excellent work at Monza and Fiorentina, who have struggled since his departure. Many questioned why he was not the first choice from the outset.
Since taking charge, Atalanta have won seven of their last nine matches, including a Champions League victory over Chelsea. They have also beaten Gasperini’s Roma in Serie A and currently sit fifth in the Champions League table.
A high-profile job in England brings different pressures and politics, which was largely why Palladino chose to leave Fiorentina, who have since managed only two wins this season.
He has shown he has the charisma to lead and the tactical flexibility to adapt to his squad rather than force his ideas. At Monza, he asked his striker to link play and bring midfielders into the game, with attacking midfielders creating overloads between the lines. At Fiorentina, he built the team around a central striker as the main reference point (he finally had a good striker!) with midfielders providing balance and support.
He is close friends with Maresca and visited Chelsea during his time off, but his Atalanta contract runs until June 2027 so it’s unlikely he’ll leave before then.
Q: Five goals scored by academy graduates as Real Madrid beat Real Betis 5-1 over the weekend. We often hear about Barcelona’s academy, La Masia but rarely about Madrid’s La Fabrica.
@TheOmarSharif via Instagram
A: It was a spectacular win for Real Madrid over the weekend and one that helped take some of the pressure off Xabi Alonso before the team jets off to Saudi Arabia to participate in the Supercopa. With Kylian Mbappe injured, the 21-year-old Gonzalo Garcia stepped up and scored a perfect hat-trick at the Bernabeu, becoming the first academy graduate to do so since Raul in 2009.
To further underline the brilliance of the youngsters, fellow academy graduates Raul Asencio and Fran Garcia also got their names on the scoresheet. It marked the first time five goals were scored by academy graduates for Real Madrid since November 25, 1989, when we were treated to the brilliance of the Quinta del Buitre.
La Masia is rightly considered one of the greatest football academies in the world, largely for the extraordinary players it has helped to create and shape. La Fabrica is different in that Real Madrid have treated it more as a source of revenue than an academy designed solely to contribute to their own long-term success. According to the CIES Football Observatory, La Fabrica was the fourth most profitable academy between 2014 and 2023, generating more revenue than La Masia.
It has famously produced the likes of Iker Casillas, Raul and Dani Carvajal, but many others have been sold on for significant profit, including Alvaro Morata and Achraf Hakimi. Real Madrid operate under a different business model to Barcelona’s, preferring to recruit the ‘biggest’ players and leverage image rights, while often relying on the revenue generated from academy sales to fund their transfer market activity. Both are brilliant but in different ways.
Q: Only last week I asked you about Ruben Amorim and that draw to Wolves and now he’s been sacked. The club has not always acted correctly but surely he’s to blame for the current mess.
@Fouaddajani via Instagram
A: I’m not sure he is. Ruben Amorim has stated repeatedly and very clearly his desire to play his way, his style and his 3-4-3. He was in talks to join Liverpool and even Barcelona, but ultimately his insistence on not adapting tactically was a major reason he never ended up taking another job.
He did excellent work at Sporting, bringing success back to the club after a long period, but those at the top of Manchester United should have known exactly what they were getting. They were hiring a coach with a fixed footballing identity and one who was unlikely to bend to the tactical preferences of others. You simply cannot assume that, over time, he will relent.
What is more worrying is that INEOS never clearly defined internally whether Amorim was being hired as a coach or as a manager. Would he have influence over transfers? United had publicly committed to a structure where coaches would work within a defined sporting strategy, yet they then appointed Amorim, made it clear that he expected to have control over recruitment from his very first press conference. So, what were the terms, what were the boundaries? Did they rush due diligence to bring in the fashionable new tactician?
Ultimately, it is the club’s responsibility to provide clarity and remain consistent with its stated ethos. If the intention was to control recruitment and ask a coach to work with the squad he was given, then that needed to be reflected in the appointment itself. In that case, a more pragmatic coach, one willing to adapt his ideas to the existing players, would have made far more sense.
Amorim has flaws and he certainly made mistakes, but responsibility does not stop with him. The biggest decisions sit with the club’s leadership, and for years they have shown a repeated inability to get those decisions right.
Q: What do you make of the whole drama surrounding Lennart Karl who openly admitted to wanting to join Real Madrid one day. Are we really trying to censor kids for having dreams?
@Ali_alobaidy0902 via Instagram
A: To set the context, these comments came from a 17-year-old player speaking candidly during a media interaction. When asked about his ambitions, he said, “FC Bayern is a very big club. It's a dream to play there. But at some point, I definitely want to go to Real Madrid. That's my dream club.”
His comments caused more controversy than he imagined and provoked backlash from sections of the Bayern Munich fanbase, especially on social media. Some have come to his defence, pointing out that he is a young lad who has yet to be media trained and simply expressed his honest emotions and feelings without considering how they might be received.
Club legend Lothar Matthaus also came to his defence, saying it is impressive that someone so young has the confidence to chase his dreams and that expecting players to be a one club man is no longer realistic in the modern game. Players may want to move, to experience something different and challenge themselves elsewhere.
In a world where authenticity has become a rare commodity, I’m in favour of allowing young players to be themselves and to be real about their dreams and feelings, even when they say things not everyone wants to hear. He will soon be media trained and taught to speak in a more controlled, robotic way, which often involves hiding emotion altogether. Personally, I would much rather listen to players who speak honestly than those who simply pretend.
